Upcoming events:

In the wake of nationwide protests, Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook have publicly stated their "support of the Black community." On the next Techtonic, Chris Gilliard discusses his recent Fast Company piece that explains how Big Tech companies profit from exploiting and harming the very communities they claim to support.

• Break up Facebook (and while we're at it, Google, Apple and Amazon), writes Robert Reich (Guardian, Nov 20): "America responded to the Gilded Age’s abuses of corporate power with antitrust laws that allowed the government to break up the largest concentrations. ... It is time to use antitrust again. We should break up the hi-tech behemoths, or at least require they make their proprietary technology and data publicly available and share their platforms with smaller competitors."

• Here’s How To Finally Fix Facebook: Barry Lynn of the Open Markets Institute writes (Nov 16): "It’s vital for the U.S. government to begin immediately to restructure the corporation. This is not a matter simply of replacing Mark Zuckerberg as CEO. Nor a matter only of adopting new national privacy rules, as Europe did earlier this year. What the government must do now is fundamentally alter how Facebook earns its money. The advertising-based revenue model must go."

• Do You Have a Moral Duty to Leave Facebook? (NYT, Nov 24): Yes. "Facebook can be time-consuming and addictive... Facebook use can worsen depression and anxiety... Facebook has played a significant role in undermining democratic values around the world. For example, Facebook has been used to spread white supremacist propaganda and anti-Semitic messages in and outside the United States. The United Nations has blamed Facebook for the dissemination of hate speech against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar that resulted in their ethnic cleansing. Facebook also enabled the political data firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest the personal information of millions of voters in the United States... Some people might think that because they mostly share photos of their cats on Facebook, such concerns do not apply to them. But this is not so."

• Wanted: The ‘perfect babysitter.’ Must pass AI scan for respect and attitude. (Washington Post, Nov 23): "Predictim, an online service that uses 'advanced artificial intelligence' to assess a babysitter’s personality, aimed its scanners at one candidate’s thousands of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts. The system offered an automated 'risk rating' of the 24-year-old woman, saying she was at a 'very low risk' of being a drug abuser. But it gave a slightly higher risk assessment — a 2 out of 5 — for bullying, harassment, being 'disrespectful' and having a 'bad attitude.' The system didn’t explain why it had made that decision."

• Data could be what Ford sells next as it looks for new revenue (Nov 13): "Ford CEO Jim Hackett gave a glimpse into what sounds like a potentially massive data mining plan... 'We have 100 million people in vehicles today that are sitting in Ford blue-oval vehicles. That’s the case for monetizing opportunity versus an upstart who maybe has, I don’t know, what, they got 120, or 200,000 vehicles in place now. And so just compare the two stacks: Which one would you like to have the data from? ... 'The issue in the vehicle, see, is: We already know and have data on our customers. By the way, we protect this securely; they trust us... We know what people make. How do we know that? It’s because they borrow money from us. And when you ask somebody what they make, we know where they work, you know. We know if they’re married. We know how long they’ve lived in their house because these are all on the credit applications. We’ve never ever been challenged on how we use that. And that’s the leverage we got here with the data."

• You Snooze, You Lose: Insurers Make The Old Adage Literally True (ProPublica, Nov 21): "Millions of sleep apnea patients rely on CPAP breathing machines to get a good night’s rest. Health insurers use a variety of tactics, including surveillance, to make patients bear the costs. Experts say it’s part of the insurance industry playbook."

• The Next Data Mine Is Your Bedroom: Google wants to scan your clothing and listen to you brush your teeth (The Atlantic, Nov 17): In a new Google patent, "Google imagines devices that would scan and analyze the surroundings of your home, then offer you content based on what they detect. According to the patent, the smart cameras in such a device could, for example, recognize Will Smith’s face on a T-shirt on the floor of a user’s closet. After matching this analysis against your browser history, the device might then say aloud, 'You seem to like Will Smith. His new movie is playing in a theater near you.'"
... but it's not just Google: "Just this month, the insurance company United Healthcare began partnering with employers to offer free Apple Watches to those who hit certain fitness goals. Insurers might also offer benefits to residents whose homes prove their fitness or brand loyalty—and punish those who don’t. Health insurers could use data from the kitchen as a proxy for eating habits, and adjust their rates accordingly. Landlords could use occupancy sensors to see who comes and goes, or watch for photo evidence of pets. Life-insurance companies could penalize smokers caught on camera. Online and in person, consumers are often asked to weigh privacy against convenience and personalization: A kickback on utilities or insurance payments may thumb the scales in Google’s favor."

• Facebook Filed A Patent To Predict Your Household's Demographics Based On Family Photos (BuzzFeed News, Nov 15): "The social media giant didn’t specify exactly what kind of demographic information its proposed system would predict, other than the number of people in a household, but its data policy specifies that demographics could include gender and age. The application makes clear that the information is intended to help Facebook target advertising more effectively: 'Existing solutions of content delivery to a target household are not effective ... Without such knowledge of a user’s household features, most of the content items that are sent to the user are poorly tailored to the user and are likely ignored by the user.'"

But in our Utopian high-tech, AI-run future, all the ills of capitalism will ... remain, as UC Berkeley found out when they discovered that African-American and Latino-American on-line mortgage shoppers get charged higher rates than Euro-Americans, just like in-person shoppers: https://www.courant.com/consumer/hc-ls-bias-online-minority-borrowers-20181125-story.html

Hi everyone, thanks for the good comments!
@chresti - it's their business model - Growth At Any Cost. they must use their surveillance devices to extract valuable data (audio, in this case) wherever they can

Technically speaking, stores like Radio Shack in the 1990s asking for phone numbers are the same as Facebook and Google collecting data. Anyway, deleting one’s Facebook, Instagram or Google account is a naive way of dealing with this. The real issue is big data and the ease at which data can be crunched compared to the past.

Big data is the “enemy” but it’s like nuclear technology: it’s not inherently bad or good, but it’s being used in questionable ways.

@JakeGould true the data-genie is out of the bottle. but at least we can shut down the worst business model & change the incentives - see Barry Lynn's piece on the importance of the model - www.thedailybeast.com...

@Mark: The subhead on that piece reads, “The government tamed AT&T into behaving like a utility.” Hahahahah! That is laughable! Really? The Ma Bell breakup only divided the Bell System into a short while and then it all reformed. Verizon, anyone?

And I will say this: If there were a realistic way to control data collection like this, I am all for it. But I don’t see dumping social media accounts as being an effective way to do this. It makes you feel good, but it doesn’t change the fact you will be profiled in some way.